


The Dead Eat Pomegranates

by blackhorseandthecherrytree



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, F/M, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Persephone Goes Willingly With Hades (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, stephcassbabs friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26203792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackhorseandthecherrytree/pseuds/blackhorseandthecherrytree
Summary: modernday JasonSteph Hades/Persephone au. lots of dead robin and shared classism feels.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown/Jason Todd
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	The Dead Eat Pomegranates

There are stories about gods and gardens. This is one of them.

-

_ In Gotham the world is a dark and dreary place; but in it, the gods walk, figures of light and darkness, evil and good. From the ashes of humanity arises divinity. There is no godhood without sacrifice. This is, of course, only what they say. But of the things that they say, this does tend to get repeated, and no one is struck down for the lie. _

_ They say that the king of the gods took a liking to a human boy and brought him up to where the gods live to be a son. The boy drank and ate of immortality. He grew tall and beautiful, enough to break a mother’s heart. They were happy, for a time. But he was still a human living with gods, and he ached for the mortality he’d left behind. _

_ The king could not deny him anything, and so the boy walked below. He tarried in shadows, but after so long above the light in him was like a beacon to anything with the sight. And so the bacchanals took him. _

-

“So, wait,” Stephanie asked the god of the hearth, her face crinkling with confusion. “What exactly are the bacchanals? I mean, I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen them. No one talks about them. But everyone hates them.”

-

_ Of these sacred mysteries we must not speak with any clarity. When those who are god-touched and driven mad take up arms, it is better to lock your doors and shutter your windows, for none can gainsay them. Their laughing god will take his vengeance with a spite unimaginable. This is what is known: the boy’s body was found torn limb from limb in a vineyard. _

_ Heartbroken, the king of the gods came and buried him, for it was too late to perform the final rituals of full divinity. He went to the underworld to see what could be done, but the lord of the dead forbade him. _

_ Ra’s al Ghul said: “What is dead is dead. We are not kin, that you should ask such a thing of me. Go and tend to your own, for the boy is gone. The dead fade quickly here. There is an end to his suffering.”  _

_ The king left, grieving as he went, all of Gotham immersed in his sorrow. He vowed to never forget. His fury became sharper-edged. The boy’s name echoed in every gaslit corner. It was known that he would never come home. _

-

In the king’s court, there is a statue of a boy with a smile on his face, a sense of mischief and a strong right hook. Stephanie’s seen it many times, of course, but her instincts have always told her to stay away from asking any questions about it. She doesn’t regret that instinct now. The king of the gods is a lot of things, but one of the things that he is is immeasurably sad. 

-

_ What the lord of the dead said would have been true, had the boy been simply mortal, but his time in the divine realm had changed his soul. Where others would collapse, it subsisted on unfadable scraps of memory and joy. It endured in the wasteland of the dead, fragile and fierce, a hero’s feat yet unmatched by even the greatest of us. And finally the daughter of the lord of the dead took pity on him in his wanderings. She found his body, stitched it together, and threw it into a Lazarus pit. Chanting holy prayers and calling on the magic that was her birthright, she strove against fate and time to call his spirit as far back to living as she could manage. _

_ Soul and body coalesced. This was not a gentle route to immortality. It was not even a route to divinity, for that required the burning away of mortal concerns. This was a new road, the best description of which is undeath. Neither living or dead, mortal or immortal, divine or human. Something entirely new, without rules or precedent.  _

_ The boy had a soul so fierce that it would not endure being called back to flesh for anything less than permanency, but even with the aid of the Lazarus pit it could not sustain itself. Unlife became etched into his bones. Whether or not the flesh sloughed off of them, he would continue his residency in whatever physicality was left to him. Such was his fate. May we be spared it. _

-

This was the point when Steph knows that she should have stopped asking questions. But it was like chips - when you’ve had one, you can’t stop. You have to know the end of the story, or at least finish the bag. She, at least, has to know more. She has to know why everyone treats her as though she were more fragile than any of them at their humanest. Reckless and foolish. A potential liability. Even if she is a human allowed access to a divine court, she knows she’s not as stupid as the gods can sometimes make her feel. 

-

_ Ra’s al Ghul was not happy with his daughter’s errant use of his Lazarus pit, but he was not unhappy either. It may be said that he was even curious. Nothing like this had ever happened, to the length of his recollections, and his recollections lasted a long time.  _

_ But as had been true of much of his reign, his curiosity did not outweigh his cruelty. He pushed the boy to impossible tasks in order to prove that he deserved his existence. It is impossible to say whether he hoped the boy would fail or succeed. But as the boy fulfilled each and every one of his requests, his anger began to froth. Perhaps he felt the threat, even then, but foresight had never been one of Ra’s al Ghul’s specialties. _

-

All Steph is saying is that she's receiving a ton of mixed messages. Some of the gods tell her to appreciate her humanity while she still has it, as if regretting past choices. Other gods encourage her to get better, harder, faster, stronger. Sometimes they seem to get annoyed that she’s not there yet. Tim feeds her ambrosia whenever he gets a chance, as if he’s afraid that she’ll disappear in front of him. He’s not quite divine yet either, but he’s farther along than she is. The king actually supports him, whereas she always comes out of meetings with the big guy feeling like a bug smashed on a windshield.

Cass became divine when she was eight, her father forcing her to become what she did not yet understand. Sometimes her form flickers back to that time: a little girl in pigtails, blood staining the front of her pretty pink princess dress. She is the goddess of wanderers, of the moon, of silence and of excellence. What she says to Steph is:  _ wait _ . 

So she does. Steph goes back to her home, with her mother on drugs or at work, and her dad in jail or planning to get back in jail, and she wonders what humanity is even supposed to be about. This…living, between divinity and death, neither one thing or the other until one of them claims you. She lies awake because she’s stopped needing to sleep so much, but she still needs to pretend that she can sleep. 

She doesn’t see the point, if there ever was one. She knows that she can’t continue on like this. 

-

_ The boy was grateful to Talia for bringing him back from his ghost-existence of a soul in the underworld. Together, they overthrew her father and instituted a new dominion. The plan was for Talia to assume her father’s throne, but she betrayed the boy and left to walk in the sunshine she had never seen. With no one left, he became the new lord of the dead.  _

_ They do not say his reign is particularly gentle. But the ghosts of murderers walk less freely, and the ghosts of the murdered are given permission to haunt their killers for as long as they desire. They say that the lord of the dead and the king of the gods have come to strong words. They say that if you have the courage to call on the lord of the dead and plead your case, he may return a loved one to you - but they will never be the same. _

-

The rituals of divinity are threefold: you must eat the food of divinity; you must dream the vision of your calling; and you must follow exactly the steps you have been told in your vision to achieve your godhood. This is the traditional way for humans to become divine in Gotham, and has been ever since the precedent was set. 

Stephanie wakes up in the very early morning. Her heart alternately jumps and breaks. But she picks herself up anyways and dresses for the occasion - a light purple dress that does absolutely nothing to break the chill of a world without a dawn, and sandals that will preserve her feet from asphalt and glass until it is time to kick them off.

The traditional way is to walk, but it was not specified in her dream, and so she takes a bus down to Robinson Park. She enters with her head held high. The green-leafed goddess looks at her - laughs - and gives her a small pouch to wear on a string around her throat. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says. “Come back when you’re done. I suspect we’ll have a lot to do together.”

-

_ The king of the gods heard that there had been a transition in power and went down to the underworld. What he saw broke his heart. It was an unhappy homecoming, for the lord of the dead could never come home. Divinity would be denied to him, for no immortal food could last long in the shades of the underworld.  _

_ The boy was angry - that he had been allowed to die, that the laughing god still walked the streets, that there would never be an end to the misery the bacchanals were allowed to unleash. Harsh words were exchanged between the king of the gods and the lord of the dead. They were separate realms, and could not rule together. Besides, the king of the gods had long denied the underworld food. _

_ Their unity could not be recreated. Whatever was now, would be, and so it has been ever since. The memory of gods lasts a long time. _

-

Stephanie knows what she has to do. That is not the same as wanting to do it. She has to slow down - she has to think - she has to decide. Suddenly, she understands everyone’s hesitation and impatience. It is not a last minute decision to make, but it is a decision that it is easier to make if you do not have to think about it. If all there are is steps and motion, action and inaction. 

There is a temple in the divine realm for every god and every maybe-god. She found hers decorated with cheerful crocus and healing aloe, thorny blackberries and delicate columbine. Morning glories climbed up the alabaster columns, while a curtain of wisteria blocked the back of the room from the front chamber. Behind it was an altar, fully prepared. Herself, the sacrificial victim to be laid down upon it. 

“The process of divinity is not simple,” came a voice behind her. Steph tried not to jump as the Oracle wheeled into her temple. “It requires pain. It requires that all that you are be transformed. You become something greater than yourself - give yourself up to it - and have yourself returned sevenfold.” Her face is stern and unchanging, but Steph is learning to read her happiness in it.

Cass walks in behind her nonchalantly, as if she has not been hoping for this for a long time, the excited tension of her muscles belied by the relaxed nature of her posture. “Lose much. Gain much.” They do not lose eye contact. “Have to choose. It’s…forever.” 

“I want it,” Steph says, suddenly sure and determined. “I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I think maybe I want this as much as it wants me.” She laughs, jittery, afraid it’s going to be taken from her before she can claim it.

The Oracle smiles at her, a short and warm thing that lights up the temple. “Then sit down,” she says. “Let me braid your hair and tell you a story.”

-

_ The lord of the dead receives visitors, but not very often. It must be said - the lord of the dead is a bit of a drama queen. But patience and perseverance go far with him, the god of hearths said. Steph decided to believe him. He seemed to know more about the heart of what was going on than almost anyone else did.  _

_ And that’s why everyone distrusts me, Steph said hesitantly. They’re worried that I’ll turn out like him. _

_ They’re worried, the god of hearths said, because they don’t know how to handle you. The mind of a teenage girl is a mystery to our king, and he sets the tone for everyone else. Not even a god can know everything, my dear, although our Oracle certainly tries. _

_ They didn’t know how to handle Jason either, Steph surmises. It’s an uncomfortable conclusion to make.  _

_ No, said the god of hearths wearily. They most certainly did not.  _

_ Well, Stephanie says. They’ll just have to learn how to handle me.  _

-

Barbara tells Stephanie a story about a princess who sleeps for a thousand years. The girl becomes queen in her dreams: fights wars and makes peace, strategizes and patronizes and develops her country. When she wakes up, she realizes that she has to start all over again, because none of the things she’d done in her dreams were yet to occur. 

“I’d cry if that happened to me,” Steph says. “What about you, Cass? What would you do?”

Cass muses over the question. “I’d be different,” she says. “I’d…change what I did. Be better.” 

Barbara is weaving violets and forget-me nots into Steph’s carefully handcrafted fishtail braid. In the burnished mirror, it looks like a crown and smells better. “I guess I would too,” Steph says thoughtfully. “A thousand years is a long time to not make any mistakes.” It’s an odd way to think about it.

“She was the best ruler the kingdom had ever seen,” Barbara says brightly. “If also the oldest, and the most likely to make weird jokes. And she had more sex than any ruler before or after. I guess after a thousand years that became a priority for her.” 

Steph snorts, while Cass blushes brightly. “Makes sense to me,” she says, although her experiences with sex hadn’t always been exactly out of this world. But when you knew what you liked and could go after it, that was important.

She doesn’t want to leave this moment. She’ll have to, soon, because Babs is putting the finishing touches on her hair, but this is as happy as she’s been in her mortal life. For that moment, she thinks fleetingly: I don’t want to go.

But that moment passes, and she knows she is going to be brave. She stands up, barefoot on cold stone. “I love you both so much,” she says, her voice breaking a little. “I’ll, um. I’ll see you on the other side.” She tries to smile. She is going to be brave.

Cass enthusiastically and ferociously hugs her. Barbara pats Steph’s arm, because Cass won’t let Steph go to share. Steph grips Babs’ hand instead.

“We’ll see you on the other side,” the Oracle says. The moon-faced goddess nods, too overcome for words. They leave in silence. 

-

_ The girl parts the wisteria curtain and goes into the sacred place. Even with still-human senses, she can feel the power emanating from it. The wisteria curls around her wrist and refuses to let her go. _

_ Below the altar, she lights the sacred fire with logs of cedar and apple, sweet-smelling fragrance. She then takes a brand and lights the central candle, the observer of her vows and transformation. The altar is beginning to smoke. She removes three flowers from her hair and puts them in the fire. She takes a knife from the cupboard besides the altar, cuts her hand and lets the blood pour onto the flame. She takes wine, pours a drop out in divine tribute before drinking the rest, rich and bitter and heady. Finally, she sits on the altar. _

_ The girl takes the pouch the goddess of nature gave her and opens it. The altar beneath her is getting hot. Inside the pouch is a single seed, more like a pomegranate’s than anything else. She swallows it and lays herself down, waiting for resurrection. _

-

Death comes, a short woman in jeans with a goth aesthetic and a black ankh around her neck. She seems more amused than anything else. “Been a while since I supervised the birth of a god in this neck of the woods,” she says. She perches on the cupboard, heedless of laws like gravity or solemnity. “You’re a cute one, though.”

There are two parts of Steph, at the moment. One of her is in complete and unceasing agony. The other is quite clearheaded. “Appreciate the compliment,” she says. Or thinks. She’s not sure there’s a difference.

To Steph, it is entirely possible that she is just straight-up tripping. She has seen, in short order: a blackberry bramble come shooting out of her chest, followed by roses and holly. They wrapped around the altar, holding her snugly to its surface before running around the room and curling around the edges like some kind of thorny prison. If she blinks, they disappear; if she blinks again, they come right back. Mostly, she closes her eyes and tries not to think about what is or isn’t real.

Four-edged thorns digging into her flesh. The warmth of smoke and flame. The smell of burning aloe and wisteria. The faint cotton lightness of her dress. Underwire from her push-up bra digging in. She is lightheaded. She is sinking.

Death smiles at her in a weirdly reassuring kind of way. “I want you to take a breath,” she says. “One after the other. Focus on it.”

She seems like a relatively nice person, so Steph obliges. But she can’t calm herself. Her breathing is ragged and desperate, almost impossible. She has to take low breaths, short ones, that leave her wanting to cough and wheeze.

“You have a choice to make,” Death says. “There are as many choices as there are directions around you, but mostly the choice is this: divinity, or death.”

“That’s always been the choice,” Steph says (thinks?). Whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it as loudly as she can manage.

Death hops down from the cupboard and comes to Steph, pushing her hair away from her forehead gently. “Slow down,” she says. “Think about what is calling to you. Let yourself listen.” Her voice is caring, almost soothing, like a mother humming a lullaby. 

Time itself seems to be slowing. Steph struggles, but does as she has been advised. The thorns are digging into her flesh and she listens to them, breathes with them, lets what is alive in her flow out through what is alive in them. She becomes rose and holly, blackberry and columbine, crocus and aloe, fire and earth. She begins to listen to an improbable hope.

The fire goes out with a bang.

-

_ The goddess of spring is dancing through the streets. She is a thing unto herself, unstoppable and uncontrollable, wild and free. Flowers follow where she walks, a cacophony of joy. She would not stop herself if she could stop herself. The sun is rising. It is going to be a beautiful day. _

-

Sing, oh gods, of that immortal flame which burns in your breast, 

Of the day your mortality turned to ash, your humanity left behind.

Is there truly no memory? No home left for the divine,

No heart, no piece of that which you were to remain.

Look! See what you have become!

Like the butterfly from the chrysalis,

The transformation is done.

-

Stephanie sits on the council of the gods, and no one tells her no.

-

She’s changed. She goes home and her mom almost doesn’t recognize her. Her dad runs in mortal fear of her, and she never sees or hears from him again. Eventually, she moves her things up to her home in the realm of the gods. She visits her mom regularly, but it’s not the same. She thinks maybe her mom is afraid of her, too; she’s sobered up and started dating again, bringing men by and asking Steph’s opinion like Stephanie is going to do to them what she did to Arthur.

It is a divine fear. The goddess of spring cannot change what she is; and more to the point, she wouldn’t want to.

-

Steph and Tim stop dating. They’re just…too different, now. What he is becoming is not the boy she was in love with, and what she is is simply…herself. But more. They love each other, but they don’t fit, and the not-fitting means more as divinities than it did as humans. They have too much glory and too many sharp edges to be as kind to each other anymore. She mourns it. Something so soft and frail and human - it wasn’t meant to last. 

-

Stephanie sits on the council of the gods, but she’s not listened to very much.

-

‘ Steph thinks - once upon a time - she wanted this because she wanted to make a difference in her world. That’s still true. But the shape of the difference has changed. She is a goddess of spring and flowers. She can make the world beautiful. With the force of a glance she can stop a human criminal in their tracks, thorns crawling up to make their path hell. 

She is doing good, she knows it. She is the bringer of hope. She is a smile against the dark, the sheer proof of the power of optimism against a gloomy day, the power to keep on going when everything in you has given up. She is doing good.

She just doesn’t know if it’s good enough.

-

Steph first meets the lord of the dead in a Gotham alleyway, with one criminal near death and another already gone. It’s his handiwork. Her first impulse is to run. Her second is to talk.

“I didn’t know that the lord of the dead ventured out of the underworld,” Steph says, because when she wants to talk she can’t shut herself up.

Jason turns and smirks at her, his face flickering between skull and flesh as if it were half-melted. He seems...amused, for whatever reason. “I didn’t know that the flower-footed goddess ventured into Crime Alley.” 

His voice is solid Gotham, a hoarse grizzle that’s halfway to pulling out a cigarette and letting the smoke curl out in between raindrops. It makes her feel more at home than she’s been since the last time she was home. (Her mom still flinches when she walks in the door. She can’t- can't seem to fix it.)

“You saying this place couldn’t use flowers?” Steph snaps back, because she’s not here to focus on her mortal relationships. “Personally, I think it could use a little sprucing up.”

“Oh, sure,” Jason agrees easily, and kicks one of the bad guys in the stomach. “That’s why I was taking out the trash.”

Steph pauses, because calling people trash is something she chooses not to do. “I don’t enjoy making funeral bouquets,” she says. “I prefer get-well flowers, to be perfectly honest.”

“But sometimes you just gotta trim a few dead branches,” Jason retorts, coaxingly. As if somehow she’s on his side, or would be. “Isn’t that your mentor’s philosophy? The ‘green-leafed goddess’, or whatever she’s calling herself now.” He makes finger quotes, as if to underline that he’s a sarcastic son of a bitch. That’s good to know.

And - of course he’d know Pam’s handiwork. Steph has had to talk Ivy down from killing people before. It’s - it’s never a fun time, when you have to explain repeatedly to someone that people’s lives have value, or that mass murder is not a feasible option. She usually has to pull Harley in, which can be kind of hit or miss. While Harley’s working with her, Steph will go and hang out with Leslie, even if she’s technically one of Bruce’s priestesses. Leslie usually has advice, or work for her to do, or  _ something _ . So Steph’s about ready to take none of this fertilizer from some dude she’s never met before, who has no idea what arguments she has with Pam regularly. She had a life before Pam, a life before being a goddess, a life before and beyond whatever it is people say about her. 

“I didn’t know that proteges had to believe everything their mentors did!” Steph exclaims brightly. “This is entirely new news to me. How well did that work out for you?”

The lord of the dead smirks again, his smug face and chiseled jaw kicking her ass in ways she didn’t know it could be kicked. “Got out of the protege business, set up my own. Life’s better when you’ve got your own place. Well,” he amends, “unlife’s better. I guess life isn’t exactly my gig.” 

He’s coming up towards her, seductive fuck-me eyes and broad shoulders and strong, chunky, delicate fingers. She’s not sure what he’s going to do. She’s not sure what she’s going to do. But -

There are times when the planets align, and the world sings, and you are in the sweet spot of the universe. Steph is just about done with every boy she knows underestimating her capabilities.Jason has his guard down and is not going to see her coming. So Steph takes her opportunity and lands a solid punch on him. She is sick of being taken for granted.

“That,” she informs him as he blinks, flat on his ass, “ is for what you did to Tim.” She won’t play fair, when it comes to the people she cares about.

The flowerfooted goddess might be themed around growth and light and joy, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own fury; Steph was Spring, but she had Winter in her, and it bit. She couldn’t forget Tim coming home: the endless ichor, the countless bruises. After what Jason had done to him, beating him up, calling him a replacement - no. She couldn’t just be casual, and she couldn’t just forget it, no matter how easy it might be to get lost in the endless dead-alive iterations of his face. No. 

She was just heading to walk briskly away when she heard a sort of crumpled laughter from behind her. It was like - like if a refrigerator had decided to laugh, or a washing machine, or something entirely unexpected and mechanical. It gave Steph the spooks.

“Okay,” Jason says, “that’s fair. You get one. What, is he your boyfriend?” He’s settled to the ground. He looks vaguely disgruntled about having a bloody nose, as if it was an inconvenience instead of a potential medical emergency. “Do people still have boyfriends? Or are you all too fancy for something so casual up there?”

That was getting entirely too close to the truth.“He’s my friend,” Steph says. “That’s enough.” That’s all this man needs to know. Then, to poke Jason’s ego and move on, she adds, “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be. And a lot less dead.” 

From Alfred’s story, Steph’d expected more visible rotting. Maybe beauty techniques in the underworld were better than she’d been told? Maybe he was more metaphysically dead, than physically? Figuring out the mechanics of divine injuries had always given her a headache.

Jason looks up at her from where he’s sitting on the criminal to the right, hand cupping his bleeding nose. His eyes crinkle. “Still taller than you. And only a little more dead.” 

He is, she realizes, trying to exhibit a nonthreatening stance while also giving hell to a really, really bad guy. A bad guy he’s probably trying to murder.

This whole case, Steph’s been thinking about what she’d do when she caught up with these people - how to make sure that they never did what they did again. There were girls who would never know peace because of them, and normal justice didn't set right with her.  She wasn’t much on curses like Babs or Tim; she was pretty good at beating people up, but compared to Bruce or Kate or Cass she was a lightweight. It was a dilemma, and one she didn't quite know how to solve. But all the same - 

She hadn’t exactly been surprised when she noticed someone one step behind her tonight. Steph had thought that maybe someone was being overprotective, or it was just another test, or something. She just figured she’d take it as a challenge to solve the case faster - and here this guy beat her to the punch. In all fairness, this was his prey, and she was the intruder, even if it’d been her case first.

“You been following me?” she asks. “I kept picking up this odor of death whenever the wind changed tonight. Which isn’t out of the ordinary for Gotham, but now I’m wondering if it was you.”

The man shrugs, like a little boy caught in the act. “Guilty as charged,” he says. The guy he’s using as a ottoman begins to make familiar little choking gasps.

Steph was fine with letting the asshole suffer, she decides, but not actually putting him in a predicament where he couldn’t breathe. She reaches out a hand to Jason, going for the indirect approach. 

“You know,” she says, “when most guys want to get a girl’s attention, they call or text or send flowers. I do a lot of business that way, with the flowers.”

Jason takes her hand to pull himself up, eyes never leaving her face. The gasping of the man behind him steadies, and Steph is full of a quiet relief. The weird tension, however, has only gotten weirder. Jason’s hand feels cool, but not cold. Dead, but not putrefied. Like a skeleton, not flesh.

“I’m not that good at flowers,” he says. She wonders if he misses them.

Steph lets go of his hand slowly. He’s just - Jason just seems really intense, she realizes. He seems...really lonely. It’s not pity that she feels, she thinks. It’s something more like...maybe sympathy?

“Well,” she hazards, wondering if this is a risk she should take or not, “I have a knack for them. How do you feel about lilies?” Since she’s a go-hard-or-go-home kind of girl, she summons a purple flower crown and places it on his head.

Jason makes a face. “Do all of your flowers smell this bad? Is that why you stay outside all the time?” He looks disgruntled, somewhere between pleased and displeased and...unbelieving.

“Wow. A walking corpse thought he could make comments about how something smells,” Steph jabs, a little rattled. “Were you expecting lilacs?” 

She pushes a forest of them to grow up around them, just to show off. This time, the smell is almost overpowering. She needs to prove that she has power - she’s not some little girl who can be threatened or driven off. She can hold her own here. She will not need to be protected or sheltered. 

Not that, uh, anyone’s really lining up to do that job, except for Leslie, sometimes.

Jason looks around - looks at her - and grins. His face is softened by it in the orange light from the streetlamps. “Nah, I just wanted to introduce myself,” he says. Lilac petals reach out and touch his dead skin, weaving through his rambunctiously curly hair and fluffing it up. “Friends in common seem to think we’re both people to watch.”

Right. Okay. Jason Todd, demi-god and lord of the dead, had heard that people trusted her about as much as they trusted him and decided to reach out. Steph glares at him. “The way they see it, you’re dangerous, imbalanced, and Talia’s choice for her domain. You can’t be trusted. You know that, but you’re here anyway and-” her branches start to wilt- “and killing my hard work-“ 

Well. What else could she expect from a god of death? Testily, she peels the dead flowers off the wall, letting them shrink and decay. The circle of life, as it were. 

Jason, to his credit, looks abashed. The crown on his head has faded well into dirt. “That’s not something I’ve really figured out how to control,” he mutters. “Yours lasted longer than they usually do.” He sounds like he’s tried.

“Well,” Steph says coolly, “score one for a success.” It's petty, but she’ll hold a grudge about this one. “Look. If we’re both distrusted, hanging out with you is not going to help my reputation any. I appreciate the offer, but I can handle it.” She glares harder. “Really.” 

She has a job to do. She doesn’t need some other newly crowned god making it even harder. She’s been the kid from the wrong side of the tracks her entire life. Now that she’s in a place to really make it, she can’t afford any screw-ups. Jason feels like a mistake she’s going to make. The sudden sense of its inevitability - it frightens her. 

The fact that they aren’t so different - that what happened to him could happen to her - that Steph understands what he’s done to these mortals, can even condone it - that she feels, daily, as if she’s climbing up a slim and slippery tightrope to the place she wants to be, and every little breeze could send her plummeting - there is something here that clicks, in inconvenient ways. She wants to say yes to him, and so she has to say no.

The lord of the dead shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says. “But if you ever want to vent, dial 1-800-Jason-Lord-Of-Hades.” With a snap of his fingers and a wink, a rumbling from underneath the earth begins to sound. 

Steph takes a step back, but it’s not enough. She has to resort to flight to avoid being dragged into his chariot, a clear one-way pass to the underworld. The two mortal assholes aren’t so lucky. Jason descends rapidly, before she can stake a claim, and the earth closes above them all.

Reporting this is not going to be remotely pleasant. Steph gives herself a moment to facepalm anyways for developing such a quick attraction to a guy so clearly up to no good. It’s almost what she would expect of a human. 

-

Down in the underworld, the lord of the dead rides with his prey. Something is stirring within him - old memories, old dreams, old habits. He feels, suddenly, very ancient. Like a thing, not a person, stitched together of other people’s wants and needs. 

For the first time in a long time, he desires. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a tumblr prompt for my friend Amanda a few years ago! I've dusted it off, polished it up, and brought it here to ao3. We'll see if this goes anywhere!


End file.
